First time today that I'd ever heard of Steve Lonegan (left). (Thanks for that, by the way, to Jon Stewart's The Daily Show) Lonegan is the senior policy director for the U.S. conservative group Americans for Prosperity. Lonegan was once mayor of Bogota, New Jersey, and unsuccesfully tried to win the Republication nomination to run for governor of New Jersey. On Tuesday in Washington, he spoke at the “High Noon for Health Care” rally of conservatives who oppose the health care legislation now before the U.S. Senate.
One thing that struck me — even as a Canadian — was how homogenous the crowd was. It was all middle-aged white people, and this in a part of the U.S. that has, well, a whole lot of people who are not white. One of the posters held up by those at the rally had the slogan “Keep your hands off my health care” and someone had drawn a hand to accompany that slogan — and coloured it black.
That disturbed me a bit but not nearly as much as what Lonegan said to the rally:
“Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi are out of touch with the American people. But they don't understand or choose not to understand that we are endowed with our creator with these rights and they're not going to take them away. Because we're going to kill the bill. Kill the bill. Kill the bill. My fellow Americans, we cannot allow the pen to be mightier than the sword. We've heard that over and over again.”
No, really, that's what he said. “We cannot allow the pen to be mightier than the sword.”
Watch it for yourself. Lonegan comes on at about 9:30 into this clip and makes his rather odd comment at 10:45 into the speech.
The health care debate in the US has been both eerie and scary. Scary in that if the Obama administration doesn't get a handle on the unemployment situation, desperation, like in the 1930s, will lead people to vote for demagogues – in the 30s it was people like Father Coglin and Huey Long, in 2010 it'll be folks like Palin….